dreamscape immersive

Today we had the opportunity to visit Dreamscape Immersive’s location based VR at Westfield Century City in Los Angeles! Upon entering, you’re greeted by friendly staff that give you the option to sign-in and purchase tickets.

Currently tickets are $20 per person and guests have the option of viewing 3 different experiences (more to come later), Alien Zoo, Lavan’s Magic Projector “The Lost Pearl”, and the Blu “Deep Rescue”. Tickets are also available for advanced purchase online at Dreamscape Immersive.

Once your tickets are purchased, there’s a cool lounge area with a bar and artifacts from each of the experiences that are in glass cases. The attention to detail even before entering is pretty cool, and goes along well with Spielberg’s grand design.

Once in the lounge area, you’re given a few minutes to relax before the experience begins. Each experience is on different time schedules and have a specific length. For us today, we had the chance to venture into Alien Zoo.

Once the experience started, we were greeted by a guide who welcomed us and brought us down the hall into Pod 1. Before we entered the actual Pod, we were escorted to a sort of VR locker room where each of us sat down and were given instructions for putting tracking sensors on our feet and hands.

Currently at Dreamscape Immersive there’s 5 Pod rooms that can have up to 6 people. After our feet and hand sensors were put on and tightened, we had a backpack with a computer attached that was also connected to an Oculus Rift headset and strapped firmly to each of us. This of course makes it wireless so we can walk around without having to deal with coords.

After going through the steps (the guides were very helpful by the way) we were escorted into the main Pod room. At this point no pictures or video were allowed so you’ll just have to experience this for yourself :). The experience started with the group of us standing together in a circle, each one of us could see each others avatars and wave and do whatever we wanted, also since we we’re in such close proximity, we could talk to each other rather well if needed.

Diving into Alien Zoo, the visuals were great overall, but what really made the experience immersive (no pun intended) was the room we were in. The rails in the room were also visually in our headsets so we could grab the rails while moving inside of VR, not to mention vibration which was calculated with the experience as it progressed.

Besides vibration to make it immersive, there was water and mist that would be used at specific times during the experience (ie. going over a waterfall and feeling mist hit your face) which made it very cool. There was also a point where each of us in the group needed to pickup flashlights and basically picking up an interactive object inside the experience was really neat because we physically picked up a real object that was also integrated with the VR experience, adding to the overall immersion and story.

The one con I had is that it wasn’t long enough, the experience was around 12 minutes not including getting ready, and when you’re having fun, time goes by fast, but I’m sure future experiences on the Dreamscape Immersive platform will have different lengths depending on the projects.

Dreamscape Immersive will go live to the public on December 14th here in Century City, Los Angeles with other planned locations coming to Dallas Texas, Columbus Ohio, and New York for starters.

Definitely a fun experience for friends and family to share together, or to be completely honest, going solo and with strangers is just as fun :). For more information on Dreamscape Immersive, head over to their website below.

Steven Spielberg’s VR startup Dreamscape Immersive has just raised 20 Million in Series B funding thanks to the AMC movie theater chain. Dreamscape Immersive also has the backing of Warner Bros, IMAX, 20th Century Fox, MGM and of course Steven Spielberg to name a few.

This is a big move for the future of entertainment as a whole and with many people opting out of movie theaters more so these days, VR and location based experiences could bring consumers back for something they just can’t get at home.

AMC and Dreamscape’s partnership will support up to 6 players in an interactive experience. This means you and your friends can be together through the thick and thin of it depending on the experience provided. As of now the agreement says up to six locations will be rolled out in the US and the UK over the next 18 months, with potentially more coming to the table depending on how things go.

This is really exciting overall as the beginning of mainstream location based VR is upon us. Sure, it’s out there already per say, but integrating VR and location based experiences into the mainstream through movie theaters will only feed adoption, create new experiences and increase VR sales for the home based markets. If anyone is up to the task, Spielberg and Dreamscape Immersive seem like a great starting point.